Five years a stranger, in my own retirement,
drifting outside the common world,
a cup poured out,
not yet knowing
what wine it was being emptied for.

*

The caravan of hours
moved on without me.
The mornings rose
on the far side of the dunes.
And sleep,
that shy bird,
would come near my hand
and never land.

*

Ten years retired,
I listened for the old drum,
the pulse that once kept time for me,
the hidden heartbeat
that carried me through my days
the way a mother carries a child
who does not know he is moving.

The drum was gone.
Only silence answered,
and in the silence,
a door.

*

Now I go down
into the quiet rooms of the heart,
where time forgets its hurry,
where night is a cocoon
spun from slow light,
and the old self sleeps
like a silkworm
dreaming of wings.

Die before you die,
the night whispers,
and I am not afraid.

*

Now I rise,
at three, at the lamp,
with a new rhythm in me,
not found,
not borrowed,
but grown from within,
the way a rose
does not search for its color.

The cup is empty now.
The Cupbearer
has begun to pour.

*

This is my adjustment:
a turning,
a returning,
a re-turning,
the moth back to the flame,
the drop back to the sea,
each step carrying me
closer to myself,
and in myself,
to the One
who was closer to me
than my own breath
all along.